A consortium that includes Sangamo BioSciences Inc. is pursuing a next-generation stem cell treatment that could provide a longer-term — if not lifetime — barrier to the AIDS virus.

But the fate of California's $3 billion stem cell research funding agency also may rest on the success or failure of the Sangamo collaboration and 13 other "disease teams" that are trying to get into clinical trials within four years.

Backed by a grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, researchers at Richmond-based Sangamo (NASDAQ: SGMO), the University of Southern California and the City of Hope medical center near Los Angeles believe they can draw stem cells out of bone marrow and knock out a gene that produces the door knob that HIV uses to access a cell. Researchers then reassemble the stem cell and place it back in the body so it can produce blood cells sans the key gene and, therefore, are resistant to HIV.

It is experimental — this specific gene therapy has not yet been tested in humans — but it has been successful in mouse models, said Paula Cannon, an associate professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at USC, who last week presented data from her lab’s work at the 18th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston.

The project received the highest science score among applicants for so-called disease team grants. Those 14 grants, totaling $230 million, were aimed at groups of researchers — academic collaborators or public-private partnerships — with stem cell-based treatments for a wide range of diseases.

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